Reading for Reasons: On Toni Morrison's Tar Baby

         source

So I felt a little discontent today after seeing the faces of my peers as they found out that I was amongst another two in a class of about thirty who had read the entirety of Toni Morrison's Tar Baby. I laughed this fact off calling myself a 'geek' and so did they.

Is it fair that I call myself such a name? I mean, sure the term 'geek' is kind of cool but it has, attached to it, a stigma associated with the negative shade of the word itself. I think the fact that I stayed up until four in the morning and that I still did not manage to finish reading the book but read the rest of it on the toilet therefore leading me to rush to uni, just so I can assist my torturous teacher in discussing this set class text so as to not leave her floored, per se, like she is in every other class due to the fact that hardly anybody reads the set texts, is rather sacrificial of me than 'geeky' yet to appeal to conformity I applied the latter.

It bothers me how crucial I am to myself in every aspect. I do not see myself the way I wish others would see me and I think that is a big problem, due to the fact of being falsely read by all those who I have come across thus far. Though I do label myself these derogatory terms, I still see the good in myself and unfortunately the bad in others, which is diminished by my humanly needs to communicate and to feel. In my communicative endeavours though I have found that I am lacking. I do not say all that I feel needs to be said due to my fear of denial, my fear of rejection, of having to find and to fall all over again and that is what stops me.

Yes, to risk is to live but to risk only to fall and break constantly shatters one's psyche. Mine is shattered to the point where I wish for others to come in yet I cannot bear closeness in fear of having their absence like the absence of everyone else from my life. In reading alone I have found stigmas tainting my entirety and it is frightening. I only hope that one day my mind is number enough so as to not feel these stigmas anymore, so as to see these stigmas as something unique, something of a utopian layer meshed into myself. I sacrificed my sleeping pattern which I had, the previous night, worked so hard to rebuild. And all this for a discussion with myself, really, for I do not deem my teacher adequate enough to converse with me.

The imagery I bring up from set texts astounds my teacher and leads her to ask other people who had previously confessed that they have not read the book as of yet even though the class presently required them to have at least done so before attending. She would rather watch someone else conjure up meanings that they are unaware of just to hide her unawareness of what I say, and like the 'geek' that I label myself I stutter and I cut off what I am saying so as to not further complicate things for her, apparently it is too difficult to think at my rate - and to think that nobody had picked up the fact that there was a mango on the front cover which indicated class distinction further discontented me. It is things like these which lead me to believe that my entire life has a stigma behind it. That like my teacher for this class, nobody else truly will be able to understand the complexity that is me.

I have developed my way of speaking now so that I sound more academic, more like I mean something important only to be ignored or in some cases mocked. And that is saddening, to see future scholars like myself being disregarded in this daily rat race. People would rather inquire into the lives of faux celebrities than real life inspiring role models. Nobody asks for my opinions anymore, and I am pretty sure it is because they have reached the level of complexity that rarely anyone wishes to encounter.


Though this is a sad truth, this is my reality. Now, I carry on onto the next novel, three times the size of Tar Baby and I will again have to face the stigma behind the word 'geek' and watch people's reactions as I perform to their alleged expectations, only to baffle them entirely. As for the text, I would like to publicly apologize on behalf of the twenty or so students in my class who enrolled to read and do not - forgive them for they cannot strain their thinking of clubbing and whatnot. Tar Baby is a superb read, one that I recommend.